Max Garland, former WI Poet Laureate, to speak at Friends of the Library Annual Meeting

Poet and author Max Garland will be the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Friends of the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 14, in the Eau Claire Room on the library’s lower level. In his presentation “The Cultivation of Wonder: Reflections on Poetry, Libraries, and Learning,” Garland will read poems and share observations from his visits to numerous Wisconsin public libraries. He will talk about the place of the library in Wisconsin’s communities, particularly as it relates to the ideas of identity, commonwealth, and the “cultivation of wonder.”

Garland is the author of The Postal Confessions (winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry) and Hunger Wide as Heaven. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, a James Michener Fiction Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, and fellowships in poetry and fiction from the Wisconsin Arts Board. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in many publications. He served as Poet Laureate of Wisconsin 2013-14 and is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, where he taught creative writing and literature for 20 years.

In addition to the program, the Friends of the Library will elect new board members and will recognize Grace E. Rich with the Distinguished Service Award. The meeting is free and is open to the public. No registration is required.